Step 6: Feasibility Study
Check out this beauty! It’s a Footprint Certification Plat that the soil experts at JT Frazier and the septic design company, Nokesville Design, put together to submit to Fairfax County. They also worked with a survey company, Schools and Townsend, for the boundary and topographic information. As you can tell, it’s a lot of coordination between many different companies. There may be some companies that have the septic designer and soil engineer under one roof, but not in this case.
According to Alexandria Survey, you would first submit a soil sample to Fairfax County and wait about 30 days before you get a response. In the response, Fairfax county will give the soil engineers direction on where to drill, how many holes to drill and other guidance to determine a percolation rate. You would then use these results to submit for a specific type of septic system and capacity. This could take another 30 days!
Fortunately for me, the sellers already started this process and so I didn’t have to wait the grueling 60 days. Unfortunately, the county denied the requested 5 bedroom capacity on a traditional septic drain field. Therefore, the “big guns” were brought in, Nokesville Design, in order to engineer an acceptable septic system based on the soils and necessary parameters. Due to shallow soils, we will be submitting a 3 bedroom capacity, drip system septic for county approval. This approval could take another 2-3 weeks.
As you can tell, getting a lot validated by the county health department is a pain-staking process that can easily take 2-3 months. From what I hear, it’s especially painful in Fairfax County. Make sure you build enough time into your feasibility period for this. All of the waiting around time you have can be used for the other tests you want to conduct as mentioned in the previous post.
Tired of doing tests during the feasibility period? Well, don’t worry. There are plenty of “fun” things you can do also. In my next post, I’ll discuss the next two steps that can occur in the midst of your feasibility period when you have all that down time: Builder Interviews and Home Design Research.
~Your Favorite HOMEboy,
Edward
